5 of The most Dangerous Car Features in History
Could a new in-car Facebook status update button soon be added to a list which includes automatic seat belts and passenger-side braking systems?
News that Mercedes-Benz is to introduce an in-car system which lets drivers update their Facebook status from behind the wheel has been greeted with dismay by road safety groups.
The technology, which will be available on upcoming SL class models, blocks drivers from typing status updates but does offer a button which lets social networking friends of the driver pinpoint their location.
Commenting on the innovation, a Mercedes spokesman said: “It is no more distracting than tuning your radio. You just press a button and it’ll update your friends.”
Photo by LotPro Cars
However, road safety organisation like GEM Motoring Assist fear that, when added to the many other distractions modern drivers face, such technology could compromise the safety of the members it provides breakdown cover to.
In September 2011, a survey by Brake found that one in eleven drivers (nine per cent) check social networking sites, surf the web, use apps or read emails while driving.
Mercedes new system, which is called mbrace 2, is not the first in-car feature or car design to have concerned road safety experts over the years – as the list below proves.
1. Automatic seat belts
In America the second generation of the Toyota Cressida, which was released in 1983, featured an automatic seat belt which was instantly deployed when the door was closed and the ignition was on. It was thought that this technology would remind drivers to wear one and also save busy people the bother of wasting two precious seconds putting a seat belt on the ‘old fashioned’ way.
Unfortunately, the seatbelt would only cover the shoulder – the lap belt part had to be applied manually. There was also the unwanted side-effect of the seatbelt knocking your glasses off and threatening to strangle you when you opened the door suddenly or leant out of the window. End result: many Toyota Cressida drivers who had happily worn seatbelts in their previous car disabled their automatic seat belt and went belt-less.
The seatbelt didn’t just constrict drivers; it constricted Toyota Cressida sales. But for the seatbelt fiasco many experts think that the Cressida would have been acclaimed as a classic car.
It certainly was an interesting design (see below)!
2. Brake dust shields
Critics of brake dust shields claim that they are another example of vain drivers putting the appearance of their car before safety considerations.
On the plus side they do keep unsightly dust off snazzy chrome or alloy wheels. On the negative side: they can obstruct airflow and impede braking performance – quite a price to pay to go dust-free.
3. Clock-face speedometers
Picture by Shahbaz Majeed
Digital dashboards briefly became popular in the 1980s but most 21st century car manufacturers favour clock-face-style speedometer gauges.
However, David Williams MBE, CEO of road safety association GEM Motoring Assist, represents the views of many modern drivers when he champions the safety advantages of digital speedometers.
Mr Williams is critical of the way many gauge speedometer designs feature 20, 40 and 60 as the prominent numbers when “in the UK the most common limits are 30, 50 and 70”.
He said: “It is also regrettable that so many cars have speedometers with a top speed far in excess of both the national limit or indeed the limit of the car. This makes the space between say 30 and 40 so narrow that a driver can’t tell if they are doing 31 or 39.”
Mr Williams added: “I get so many members claiming that it is impossible to stick rigidly to the speed limit because to do so requires them to be studying their speed dial too long. For this reason we fully support large digital speedometers where the actual speed is shown clearly and can be read at a fraction of the time needed to read a dial with poor spacing and irrelevant numbers.”
Photo by Martin Burns
Car manufacturers seem to be slowly getting the message – many new and expensive cars have the option of a digital speedometer reading. A 1980s speedometer revival could be on the cards!
4. Sat navs
Sat nav disasters can be potentially life-threatening; the case of the Englishman who drove 20 feet along a railway line because his “sat nav told him to” is one example of computer-inspired dangerous stupidity.
Other incidents are merely laughable; for instance the time when a sat-nav using cab driver was asked to take Earl Spencer’s daughter Katya to Stamford Bridge in London to watch a Chelsea match and instead delivered her to Stamford Bridge in North Yorkshire.
5. Citroen’s phantom passenger brake
It’s often nice for people travelling in the passenger seat to stretch out their legs to avoid getting cramp on long journeys. But if you did this while travelling in a Citroen C3 Picasso car in May 2011 you might have been dicing with death. Citroen recalled more than 20,000 of these cars when it was discovered that the brakes of some of the cars could be activated from the floor of the passenger side.
The fault came about because the cars are built in France and then modified to meet right-hand drive requirements for the UK market. A thin piece of felt was used to cover the braking mechanism on the passenger’s side and it was found that the material was far too thin to fulfil its purpose on some models.
It’s important to stress that the problem has now been fixed so that drivers of Picassos should not now be performing unexpected emergency stops!
photo by M.Peinado
Author: James Christie writes for Car Breakdown Cover company – GEM Motoring Assist.
